Things They Should Invent:

A phone number that you call to get an ice cream truck to come to your location!

I have to keep reminding myself that I have some money now, enough that money doesn't matter. Not for important things. And glasses are important. So, because the idea of never wearing these frames again makes me weep, the correct thing to do is take them to Lenscrafter's or Shorney's or whomever can do one-hour frames the cheapest, and get new lenses put in them. Then I will have my lovely frames and they will correct my astigmatism and all will be right with the world. And then if all the paint falls off or I feel like new frames, I can acquire them at my leisure.

Yeah, so if I ever start angsting about something that can be solved by throwing less than a week's pay at it, someone just smack me and remind me that I do have positive cash flow.

The very first glasses I've ever liked, and the frames have been discontinued. So I had the idea of getting new lenses in the current frames, but today I just noticed that the paint on the frames is chipping (I didn't even know there was paint on the frames!)

I think I'm going to cry.

I wish there was a way to make my cellphone beep when it was done recharging.

Concepts that exist in every language I've studied but don't exist in English (with examples in French):

- a single verb for "to do" and "to make" (faire)
- two verbs for "to know", one representing concrete knowledge of a fact or a skill (savoir) and one representing familiarity with a person, location, subject or concept (connaitre)
- two verbs for "to live", one representing being alive (vivre) and the other representing living in a particular location (habiter)


I know there are more, and I'll add them as they occur to me.

Imagine you can't talk but can still vocalize - your mouth is full, or you're at the dentist's or something. You want to express "yes", "no" or "I don't know". You would express "yes" by nodding your head and saying "mmm-hmmm" with an ascending pitch. You would express "no" by shaking your head and saying "nnnn-nnn" with a descending pitch. You would express "I don't know" by shrugging your shoulders and saying "mmm-mmm-nnn" with an ascending pitch followed by a descending pitch, the same pitch pattern that you woud use to say "I don't know."

Now take the body language, leaving only the vocalizations. Those vocalizations still communicate the concepts of "yes", "no", and "I don't know" to English speakers. What I'm wondering is whether they translate. I don't think the "I don't know" vocalization translates as well, because it's "Je ne sais pas" or "Ich weiss nicht" or "No se", all of which have different pitch patterns. But would "mmm-hmm" and "nnn-nnn" translate?

From the Brilliant Ideas that will Never Work file:

We know that there are waiting lists for some health care services. Some people have proposed permitting privatized health care as a solution to this. However, there is a great deal of concern that, since the waiting lists are generally a result of a lack of available health care professionals, any private health care service would just end up poaching professionals from the public sector, resulting in even less care being available for those who cannot afford to pay out-of-pocket.

We also know that there are quite a few immigrant medical professionals in Canada who are not qualified to work in Canada, but are perfectly qualified in other parts of the world.

Solution: allow privatized health care, but it can be staffed only by health care professionals who are not qualified in Canada but are qualified elsewhere in the world. Their credentials would be available and people who opt for privatized care could assess the risk for themselves. It would be regulated in such a way that working for the public sector is more desireable and beneficial than working for the private sector, but working as a private sector health care provider is more beneficial and desireable than, say, driving a taxi. Private-sector work would count as "Canadian experience" and help qualify the workers to work in Canada.

For my own reference, elements that were introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that I don't think have yet been used to their full potential in the series:

- House Elves (have had their uses, but don't feel fully used)
- Parseltongue (useful in the book itself, but not in the series)
- Gilderoy Lockhart
- Acromantulas (although I hope I hope I hope I'm wrong about this!)
- The Polyjuice incident, and the fact that Hermione got turned into a cat (Polyjuice itself has been used, but could have been introduced another way)
- The concept of regrowing bones
- The fact that the Sorting Hat can be used for purposes other than Sorting
- The Sword of Gryffindor
- The fact that Voldemort resembles Harry
- Colin Creevey and his camera (although the camera did have a function in that book)
- Penelope Clearwater
- The fact that Filch is a Squib

Un by Dennis Lee

It's hard to believe that this is the same man who gave us such childhood pleasures as Alligator Pie. At first glance, it seems like an almost computer-generated grouping of random words into somewhat syntactically correct poem-like arrangements - colourless green ideas sleeping furiously. But when you read it, you see that it has a plot, although it's like you're looking at the plot through a dirty window without your glasses on. And when you read it out loud, you discover an aural playground. There's a story being told and there are recurring themes as the poems reference each other, but it's all rather beyond me.

My optometrist recommends anti-reflective coating on my glasses to prevent glare when I'm working with a computer.

Problem: I don't know if I have glare problems, because I don't know what glare is for a computer monitor. I know what it is when driving, but I can't extrapolate that to a computer. Can anyone explain glare?

Every single person in my class resembles someone I've met previously. I can go around the room and say "He looks like my cousin, she looks like my parents' friends' daughter, she looks like this girl from my second year English class, she looks like the head of Student Advising from my alma mater."

Perhaps this means that I have already met my quota of people in this world, and we're now into reruns.

A lot of the time, when someone is convicted of rape/murder/general psychopathy, they interview his friends and neighbours on the news, and they say "I can't believe he's a rapist/murderer/psychopath! He was always so charming!"

It's also a characteristic of abusers. They're always very charming, and then become abusive in a domestic situation. And once people find out, they're always like "I had no idea! He was always so charming!"

Question: So why is "charming" still considered a positive personality trait?

I am a geek because:

- I special-ordered a dictionary from the UK because I wasn't happy with the selection available in Toronto.
- When the prof was going around the class asking people how old they were, I intentionally raised my hand because I'm the only one in the room whose age is declined in the genitive case, and I knew that she needed an opening to introduce that concept.
- I already knew how to decline my age because I had read ahead in the textbook.
- But I gave an incorrect, undeclined answer anyway so the prof would have a chance to correct me and write the right answer on the board.
- And then I proceeded to get bored because the rest of the hour was spent introducing the rest of the class to case theory.
- And I found myself thinking "What's wrong with these people? Didn't any of them study German?"
- And it was possibly the first time in as many as eight years that I'd been in an academic setting where no one had studied German.

Things that were not successfully taught to me in elementary and high school:

- The purpose of having multiple drafts of a text isn't just to correct spelling mistakes, it's also to perfect the wording of the text. (I figured this out in 3rd year uni)

- Literary analysis is a specific skill that people need to be taught. It doesn't just pop into people's minds naturally. (This occured to me well after I'd finished university)

- When writing an essay, you need to address or pre-emptively nullify possible objections to your arguments. (This was taught to me in 2nd year uni)

- Criticism of one's essay is not an ad hominem attack (This came to me when I became involved in Sugarquill. In my defence, I had a teacher who had a knack for making everything feel like an ad hominem attack)

- In language classes, it doesn't matter if what you say is true or not. The prof just wants to see if you've mastered the accusative case. (This occured to me today)

When I was a child, I was taught that you write out a rough draft with a pencil and paper, and then type it up when you're done.

Now, on those increasingly rare occasions where etiquette requires a hand-written letter, I type up a rough draft in Word, edit it until I'm satisfied, and then copy out the final version by hand.

In the interest of general public safety, OHIP should cover eye exams for all drivers who are required to wear corrective lenses as a condition of their licence.

For my own reference, the books whose reviews I lost in the whole mail-to-blog debacle:

The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch: Good concept, would have been much better if it had focused on Eliza Lynch instead of that doctor guy.

Muriella Pent: I'm not the target audience of this novel and am unfamiliar with the culture that it is satiring (can satire be used as a verb?)

The Lucky Ones: Excellent tying together of the various threads of the story, but I'm not the best audience for vast reflections on parenthood.

The Ultras: Meh.

The Collected Stories of Carol Shields: Some excellent short stories, but most are rather meh. Less humour or irony than I'm used to in short stories. The best one is Absence.

FYI: Eye exams are covered by OHIP until Nov. 1, not July 1 as originally planned.

I just had a really bizarre dream. It started at my Babcia's house, where some of my cousins and I were trying to get rid of an infestation of Creatures (these Creatures had a name that corresponded with the name of a real life animal that might infest a house, but I forget what the name was). Although all these Creatures were apparently of the same species, no two looked alike. Some were large white gelatinous blobs, and some where small insects in a ludicrious shade of purple. You got rid of them by sprinking confetti on them, which made them disappear.

Then I turned into Bucky Katt from Get Fuzzy. Because of something stupid Bucky/I had said (Bucky said it before I became him), I had to climb up on this huge arch made of scaffold (it resembled the arch on top of the Skyway Bridge, except the scaffolding went all the way down to the water below) and jump off into the water. So I climbed to the very top of the bridge, held on with my hands and hung down, then let go. I plunged straight down into the water. As I sank, I remembered that I should make the vertical "footprint" of my body wider, so as to slow the sinking, but I couldn't. I tried to swim upwards, but vaguely remembered that you might lose your sense of orientation when underwater and you should open your eyes and swim towards the light. Unfortunately, I've lost my ability to open my eyes underwater. I suddenly found myself having to breathe, but still underwater. Then I woke up.

When I woke up, I was filled with doubt about whether I can still swim at all. It has been year's since I've gone swimming, and even longer since I've swum properly instead of just splashing around in a pool. I have no idea if I'd drown or not if forced to jump into the water. I wonder if my building's pool is still open?